Microsoft store runs out of the $499 Surface RT inventory

The $499 Microsoft Surface RT tablet has been officially declared as Out-of-Stock as of the afternoon of November 1, 2012 at the Microsoft online store. The $499 Surface RT tablet had been earlier labeled as ‘back-ordered’ just like its $599 and $699 siblings. Incidentally the other two models which came with the innovative touch cover are now no longer listed as back-ordered. Currently the Surface RT Tablet is available only on Microsoft’s online and offline stores.

In a response to a query sent out by CNET, a Microsoft spokesperson replied that the store is likely to run out of some of the models periodically. Upon probing it was found that the Microsoft offline stores elsewhere in Century City, California, Newark, Delaware and Scottsdale, Arizona however were having stocks of all three models.

It was also found that a store in Glendale, California (Holiday Day Store) has run out of the $499 model and the Scottsdale store reported that they were running low on the $499 model themselves.

One can draw some hypothetical relation between the Microsoft ploy to give away thousands of the 32GB Surface model, along with the touch cover, to developers at the Build conference earlier this week, and the current impact on the supply line.

The launch of the Surface RT Tablet is being closely watched by other branded PC makers like Acer, who would be monitoring the performance to decide when and if to launch their own version of tablets based on the new OS. Windows RT is an operating system based on Windows 8 and specifically designed for the ARM chips. Existing systems which are compatible with the Windows 7 are no longer compatible with the RT.